ANIMAL COURAGE 



NOTHING in his inimitable series of pictures of the 

 wild life of India, from the animals' point of view, 

 is more thrilling or better told than the triumph of 

 Mowgli over the red dogs of the Deccan, which Mr 

 Rudyard Kipling has reserved for the climax of his 

 epic of the Jungle. Nothing could be more vivid 

 than the words in which he depicts the terrors 

 of all the beasts at the tidings of the invasion of 

 the ' Dhole,' the stratagem which brings them into 

 the stronghold of the ' busy, furious, black wild 

 bees the " Little People of the Rocks " ' or 

 their destruction by the awakening of the ' clotted 

 millions ' of the sleeping insects. But it is not the 

 climax which might have been expected by those less 

 familiar than the writer with the natural history and 

 native lore of the Indian peninsula. That the most 

 courageous creatures of the jungle should be dogs, 

 and these of no great size or very formidable ap- 

 pearance, seems at first hardly creditable ; yet there 



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